As nonfungible tokens (NFTs) became more popular, bad actors who constantly try to exploit users within the space have become more active. Now, a new hack involving a feature on the NFT marketplace OpenSea threatens NFT holders through phishing sites. In an announcement, anti-theft project Harpie warned NFT users of a new hack involving gasless sales on the OpenSea platform. According to Harpie, hackers were able to steal millions in digital assets by exploiting the feature. When users want to conduct gasless sales within the OpenSea platform, they are required to approve a signature request with an unreadable message. With this feature, users are also able to allowed to create private auctions with unreadable signatures. Hackers have been able to steal NFTs like magic with a little-...
Less than three weeks after two dozen Taylor Swift fans sued Live Nation over Ticketmaster’s disastrous presale of tickets to her Eras Tour in November, another similar lawsuit has been filed against the concert giant in California federal court. Filed Tuesday (Dec. 20), the class-action lawsuit, brought by Swift fan Michelle Sterioff, accuses Live Nation and subsidiary Ticketmaster of violating federal antitrust and unfair competition laws and “intentionally and purposefully” misleading “millions of fans into believing” Ticketmaster would prevent bots and scalpers from participating in presales for the tour. Similar to the lawsuit filed earlier this month, Tuesday’s lawsuit alleges that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, which merged in 2010, represent a monopoly in both the primary and second...
The Republic of the Marshall Islands, an independent island state located in the Pacific Ocean near the Equator, has announced that the Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Act of 2022 has officially been passed into law. The law recognizes decentralized autonomous organizations and enables legal entities registered in the country to formally adopt DAO structures and governance tools. The government hopes the move will encourage the growth of decentralized entities and their accompanying elements within the state. According to the announcement, the DAO Act of 2022 will allow DAOs to incorporate as limited liability companies (LLCs), enabling them to identify as DAO LLCs. The act is also poised to allow both for-profit DAOs and nonprofit DAOs to register while providing definitions and re...
Unique addresses on the Build and Build (BNB) Chain have now surpassed Ethereum, according to a Dec. 22 statement from the developer. BNB Chain has made significant strides in onboarding the next billion users into #Web3 in 2022. We want to thank our incredible community for coming along for the ride as we lay the groundwork for an even bigger year to come. Further details ⤵️https://t.co/9jNFdVeoZ3 pic.twitter.com/QjxL3ey759 — BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) December 22, 2022 The developer claims that this makes BNB Chain “the largest layer 1 blockchain in the world.” However, blockchain data shows that the Bitcoin network is still larger than both BNB Chain and Ethereum. According to Etherscan, Ethereum currently has over 217 million unique addresses. By contrast, BNB Chain has over 2...
The last year has been an eventful one for the crypto space. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its TerraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin saw $50 billion wiped off the market in a flash. And more recently, FTX, an exchange many thought was “too big to fail,” came crashing down. There’s been no shortage of drama in the space, which has seen name-stay businesses and projects disappear along with investors’ funds. Given the events of this year, it’s inevitable that serious government attention is coming for the space, in every major jurisdiction — and on the time scale of a few months to at most a few years, not decades. This was fairly clear to most industry observers even before the recent FTX debacle, and now it has become glaringly obvious. There is much debate in the space abo...
2022 saw the continued advancement of green crypto projects as more industry companies focused on sustainability to reduce carbon emissions. A series of elemental forces drove the paradigm shift, including user demands for faster and more energy-efficient blockchains, growing climate change awareness among investors, and rising government concerns about energy consumption in the crypto sector. Among the most notable eco-friendly crypto developments in 2022 was the transition of the Ethereum blockchain from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus layer. The Merge, completed in September, joined the original execution layer of Ethereum with its new PoS consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining by enabling the network to be secu...
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 22nd December, 2022, Chainwire -The strategic partnership will allow AFA to engage fans with a better understanding of how the metaverse works, how to contribute and benefit, while also expanding fan engagement and connecting fans to the teams and players they admire -The partnership represents the first Argentinian football presence in the metaverse and the first time for Upland to offer exclusive in-game video footage ownership to fans The Argentine Football Association (AFA), FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ World Champions, and Uplandme, Inc. the leading metaverse platform in mapping the real world that already has more than 3 million registered accounts, today announced the signing of an official license agreement to bring the First Division Argentina (...
Bitcoin (BTC) fell at the Dec. 22 Wall Street open as United States equities reversed previous gains. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Bitcoin risks new and unseen “death cross Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to intraday lows of $16,650 on Bitstamp. The pair remained a conspicuous stocks copycat as the S&P 500 opened down 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite Index traded down 1.8% at the time of writing. The weakness appeared to be a reaction to stronger-than-expected U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Q3, data for which was released prior to the open. Despite notionally a sign of recovery, concerns focused on the Federal Reserve continuing its restrictive economic policy on the assumption that the economy wo...
More than one million creditors of failed crypto exchange FTX have been waiting to be made whole since before the firm’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11, but according to one expert, recipients of donations and contributions may have a legal means of returning the funds directly to investors and customers. Louise Abbott, a partner at United Kingdom-based firm Keystone Law, told Cointelegraph it was “extremely unlikely” FTX would have a legal leg to stand on in its demands for the voluntary return of political campaign donations, grants, and other contributions the firm made prior to its bankruptcy. However, many individuals and organizations — likely the result of public scrutiny — have already returned or pledged to return an estimated $6.6 million to FTX, a fraction of the millions th...
According to a new press report published by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), North Korean hackers have stolen more than 800 billion Korean won ($620 million) worth of cryptocurrencies from decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms this year. The agency also revealed it blocked a daily average of 1.18 million attacks perpetrated by national and international hacking organizations in November. However, a NIS spokesperson revealed via local news outlet Kyunghyang Shinmun that all of the $620 million stolen by North Korean hackers through DeFi exploits occurred overseas, adding: “In Korea, virtual asset transactions have been switched to real-name transactions and security has been strengthened, so there is no damage.” Many funds have been lost ...
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was remanded to the notorious Fox Hill Prison in Nassau, Bahamas, pending an investigation into the collapse of his exchange, had a different experience than many other prisoners. According to the Financial Times, Bankman-Fried was held in the sickbay where he had access to a toilet, running water, a TV, local newspapers, crossword puzzles, and many other perks, including vegan food. Anonymous prison officials disclosed that the former CEO spent his days watching the news and reading articles about himself. SBF’s prison experience appears to have been very different from what many other prisoners endure in their overcrowded, poorly ventilated, rat-infested prison cells, where they are forced to sleep on the floor using makeshift cards. Unlike oth...
Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who is set to retire from U.S. Congress at the end of the term, has used one of his last few weeks in office to introduce a new stablecoin bill, aimed at creating a regulatory framework for “payment stablecoins.” Toomey — who also serves as the ranking member of the U.S. Banking Committee — said the Stablecoin TRUST Act of 2022 would serve as a framework for stablecoin regulation for his fellow senators, who are looking to pas stablecoin legislation in 2023. In a Dec. 21 statement, the senator called stablecoins an “exciting technological development that could transform money and payments,” adding: “By digitizing the U.S. dollar and making it available on a global, instant, and nearly cost-free basis, stablecoins could be widely used across the physical...